Retour à Babylone (2002)

Abbas Fahdel: Self

Quotes 

• Abbas Fahdel : [voice-over]  The past, with its overwhelming splendour and its scents of paradise lost, is too painful for Iraqis to bear. I recall my father reciting the poet Al-Rissafi: "We are not masters of our miserable present / On men of a foregone age / The face of time once smiled / But on seeing us, it darkened."

• Abbas Fahdel : [voice-over]  This man seems so familiar. He resembles my old history teacher, Mr Nima. But it must be a hallucination, because I was told he was dead. I'm already starting to see ghosts.

• Abbas Fahdel : [voice-over]  I can't wait to meet my childhood friends. Have they survived? The only one I have news of is Mohamed. He wrote to me: "Come and film us. You'll see how photogenic we've become with all these scars of waste chiseled onto our faces by 20 years of war and 12 years of embargo."

• Abbas Fahdel : [voice-over]  I remember this bridge, I recall this street, these buildings. And yet, nothing resembles the memories I have kept of them. Everything is so run-down.

• [last lines] 

  Abbas Fahdel : [voice-over]  I found my last friend. If I were to die now, I would do so in peace. I have finally retied the threads of my history.